I'm in Wellington!

I'm five days into the kiwi experience and I've made it down to Wellington. On my way I have seen many hills, many sheep and bucket loads of rain. In fact bucket loads may be a gross understatement. The tap has been constantly on pretty much. Despite that the country is still looking beautiful and I'm enjoying the journey.

Day 1 we headed out to Coromandel Peninsula. We got off the bus to take a walk down to a secluded beach by Cathederal Cove.

We were blessed that there was no rain while we were off the bus. After trekking all the way back up to the bus, we headed over to Hot Water Beach.

Here you can dig your own hot pools. Unfortunately the tides weren't working for us so it wasn't possible. Plus it had begun raining so I enjoyed the view mostly from the bus. We went for another walk through an old gold mining area.

I don't know how or why but we ended up taking a walk through one of these mines despite not having any torches. It was actually worse than the caves in Vietnam. It was worth it though as we got to see some glow worms. It looked like there was a starry sky inside the cave. We made it to Mercury Bay that evening. After a big meal and watching ANTM, I headed to bed as we had an early start the next day.

From Mercury Bay we headed over to Waitomo. Waitomo is the place where you can go Black Water Rafting in the glow worm caves. I signed up to do the Black Labirynth which was tubing and climbing in the caves. On our way there we were told that the black water rafting had been rained off and that the caves were now flooded. I has half glad and half disappointed. As we had time to kill we went for a bush walk and our driver, Bods, taught us a load of stuff I've forgotten about the plants and caves there. As there was pretty much nothing else in Waitomo, we headed to Curley's Bar that night. It was a nice warm pub and a couple of us left to go to bed before the rest of the group decided to go and check out the 'haunted' hotel.

We were awoken at 7am by Bods who let us know that the Black Water Rafting was back on. Natascha and I were picked up from the hostel and taken to the rafting centre. The driver (who was also our instructor) told us that they still didn't know whether the rafting would go ahead or not yet. I got all dressed up in my lovely wetsuit and I can tell you that I looked rather attractive in all the gear.

Once the whole group was dressed up and ready to go we headed down to the river. As we had to jump down a waterfall when in the cave we had to practise in the river how to jump with our tube. One by one we jumped in. I can tell you now that the water was freezing and I have no idea how I managed to grin like that for the camera.

We got to the cave enterance and I began to wonder whether I actually wanted to do this. I decided that actually, I valued my life a bit too much but I'd paid 95 dollars for this so I was gonna get my money's worth.

The enterance was tiny and the water was gushing in pretty fast. Once in there and walking through I began to feel more comfortable. My eyes had adjusted to the lack of light ( we only had the torches on our helmets) and I'd got used to the small space inside the cave.

I got to a bit where we tubed down a bit. I got in my tube and started rushing down the cave. It was so cool. Until of course I went flying out of the tube and got a mouth full of water. Luckily, I saw the funny side and couldn't stop laughing. By the time I joined the group, we'd stopped moving. The instructor comes rushing back and says that we all have to get out the way we came as the next bit of the cave was flooded up to the ceiling.

We had to turn back and climb out the way we came. Problem was that the water was coming in pretty quickly and fighting the urge to rush out of the cave was not the best idea. It wasn't easy, but we eventually made our way out of the cave. Once back at the center, it was great to be able to get a hot shower and free hot soup and bagel. Thankfully I got a full refund on the trip so I got my little adventure free of charge!

I'm going to finish this off here as I'm running out of time and it's dinner time and I'm, well, starving.